The nearly 50-year-old National Inventors Hall of Fame will induct its first two Black female members next spring. Engineer Marian Croak and the late ophthalmologist Patricia Bath are two of seven honorees announced this month, who will join the Class of 2022, along with 22 others announced last year, reports NPR. Bath is considered the first Black female physician to receive a medical patent. She invented laserphaco, a device that performs all steps of cataract removal, which was in wide use by 2000, a little more than a decade after Bath’s first of five patents was issued in 1988.
"Bath's method employed a faster technique and established the foundation for eye surgeons to use lasers to restore or improve vision for millions of patients suffering from cataracts worldwide," according to a news release. The first Black woman to complete a residency in ophthalmology at New York University and the first woman to chair an ophthalmology residency program in the US also co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness and the Ophthalmic Assistant Training Program at UCLA, per NPR.
Croak, who holds more than 200 patents, pioneered Voice over Internet Protocol technology, which converts voice data into digital signals that can be sent over the internet and is used in personal communications and audio- and videoconferencing, while an engineer at AT&T. The Hall of Fame acknowledges a need for more diversity among its inductees, most of whom are white. "I find that it inspires people when they see someone who looks like themselves on some dimension, and I'm proud to offer that type of representation," Croak, now leading Google's Research Center for Responsible AI and Human Centered Technology, tells Google's blog.
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Bath's daughter, Dr. Eraka Bath, says the "overdue recognition" is "an unbelievable honor." Erika Jefferson, founder of Black Women in Science and Engineering, tells CNN that Bath was nominated for the Hall of Fame 11 times before her 2019 death at age 76. "Her incredible career path—and her contributions to the study of ophthalmology, cannot be understated," her daughter adds. All 29 honorees—including the inventors of the sports bra and Super Soaker—will be inducted at a ceremony in Washington, DC, on May 5. The Hall of Fame currently includes 610 innovators. Of those, 48 are female, 30 are Black, 19 are Asian, and five are Latino, per CNN. (More inventor stories.)
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